Samsung GT-18800 Tizen smartphone images leaked

On February 25, we reported that Samsung would be stopping work on Bada OS while merging some of its features into Tizen OS, making the latter operating system backwards compatible with Bada apps. Almost a month later, word surfaced yet again that the Korean company will be releasing a high-end Tizen smartphone in August or September of this year, but all went silent again. Now a Tizen-based Samsung smartphone has been imaged and leaked online.

The images appeared over on the Greek Tizen community website Tizen.gr, with the "About phone" menu showing the codename "Redwood" and the model number being listed as GT-18800. They also reveal that Samsung has implemented S-Voice, S-Beam, and Wi-Fi Direct into the handset, which is a welcomed addition. The operating system is Tizen 2.1.

The handset is slated for release to 500 developers who are taking part in the Tizen Developer Conference, and so it is possible this is a development-only handset that won't ever be an official, commercially-available phone. No specs on it were revealed except for the resolution of its display, which sits at 720p HD. The images are too dark to see anything about the body of the phone, unfortunately.

As we mentioned, Samsung will reportedly release a Tizen handset this fall, per a statement made by the company's mobile business Executive Vice President Lee Young Hee at a conference in Seoul. According to Hee, the phone will be "in the the high-end category. The device will be the best product equipped with the best specifications." No specifics were provided, however.

Such a statement followed a leaked image of a Samsung Tizen smartphone that was imaged back in May 2012, with not much being said about it except that it featured a 720p display and a 1.2GHz dual-core ARM chipset. Such a device wasn't intended for consumer release, however, being aimed at developers working on Tizen apps.